


Nasty Little Voice

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Depressing, Eating Disorders, One Shot, Protective Minerva McGonagall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24281638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Physical hunger is a crawling kind of pain. A creeping, aching, dirty kind of agony that starts deep down in the base of his stomach and nestles itself a hollow up under his ribs. A creature, burrowing into his flesh with blunted teeth and salivating tongue.But that is the easy part. Hunger you can learn to enjoy.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 65





	Nasty Little Voice

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Please do not trigger yourself with this, it does include talks of eating disorders and one of the "habits". This fiction is not pro eating disorders, but written from the perspective of someone who is in the middle of one.

Not eating, Harry knows, is the easy part.

Physical hunger is a crawling kind of pain. A creeping, aching, dirty kind of agony that starts deep down in the base of his stomach and nestles itself a hollow up under his ribs. A creature, burrowing into his flesh with blunted teeth and salivating tongue.

But that is the easy part. Pain you can learn to enjoy.

The difficult part, he thinks to himself with a little hysterical grin, is maintaining your objectives.

Because, sometimes, that nasty, grimey little monster slinks up his spine, trails its way through the hollows of his collar and finds a way into his brain. Into his thoughts, into everything he knows.

'Just eat today, tomorrow is a new day. You can fix it all tomorrow.' It whispers, tone sugar sweet and so delectable he could just devour it with a single gulp.

'You could get better, Harry: be happy.' It murmurs, scoffing lightly at his reasurrences that he is happy, that he will be happy.

Sometimes, it feels like Harry is split right down the middle. Two people trapped inside one emancipated vessel. But he doesn't think it often because it reminds him of Tom's silky tone as he takes over Harry's vision.

Other times, he enjoys the fight. He enjoys winning. He enjoys that little, hungry- hungry- hungry voice screaming with every bite he turns away.

Hermione doesn't seem to get the same satisfaction out of quelling that innate need to eat. Nor, it would seem, does Minerva McGonnagal, for she sits across the desk to him with a pinched expression: one that manipulates already aging features into a crumpled kind of concern.

"Biscuit, Mr Potter?" She asks with a tight smile, rattling the tin slightly in- he assumes- an attempt to soften the tense atmosphere.

"I'm alright, thanks." Harry replies easily, instead stretching across to the table and scooping up the steamy mug of tea she had placed in front of him.

Thick, milky liquid. He doesn't have to taste it to get a hint of the sugar, rising with the steam in sickly clouds.

He places the cup back down untouched with a resounding thud, knowing nursing the heat between cool fingers would do very little to help his image.

Minerva places a biscuit on his saucer despite his words and he has to trap the trembling digits below him in fear that they will reach out of their own accord.

"I asked you to pop by in order to discuss your grades, Mr Potter. You have always been a bright young man, very powerful, however this year you seem to have hit a standstill-"

He parts his lips in response, the answer already constructed and practised. Right down to the sad little smile at the end and the odd little lip bite.

A tale of dead God-fathers, grief and the ongoing distraction of Dumbledore's lessons.

Harry long ago swallowed down the guilt of such a facade, firmly telling himself that all that mattered was that he stayed in control and saved the world. The words mockingly trivialised as he repeated them in a mantra below his breath with each dawn. The sentences echoing on repeat as he jogged the perimeter of the quidditch pitch just one more time. Then the time after that last time and then once more in a lap that he didn't count. Just in case.

But he didn't utter the first syllables before he was cut off once more.

"But that isn't the only reason I called you here. Some of your friends have had some concerns with your eating habits."

He didn't rehearse for that long stare she gives him now. He didn't prepare for that furrowed brow and slightly tilted head.

"I eat." He bites out.

"That appears to be the issue, Mr Potter, to put it quite frankly, that you do not. We have gone over this once before, where I gave you the benefit of the doubt and a chance to prove yourself."

"I eat!" He responds, because he is having a hard time thinking right now. A hazy fog settled over his mind and only rabbit trails cutting through it.

And it isn't a lie. He does eat. He can remember each and every single crumb, in fact, that he has eaten all day.

Half an apple at breakfast with a sip of pumpkin juice to appease Hermione's fiddling fingers.

Thick tomato soup and half a slice of white, unbuttered, toast at lunch.

A handful of salt and vinegar crisps when he faltered came at 3 o'clock, choked down his throat by that stained voice before he could come back in control.

"Lying isn't going to get us anywhere. As a matter of fact, this concern was not brought up by just one of your friends, but a great number of you acquaintances."

"I eat in the kitchens-"

"The staff have open communications with the house elves."

"Hogsmeade sells food, I don't like eating in front of people-"

"It was your friends who came to voice this, they know, Mr Potter, what you buy and don't buy."

Minerva's voice is growing wearier with each lie that escapes him, but he can't stop it. He can't control any of the words that fall from the lax lips, it's through a dream like state that he watches his form spit out the venomous spars. He wonders, vaguely, why he doesn't just stop digging himself a hole.

Then, the voice says, far less vaguely, that actually that metaphor is ironic for him, because really he is digging a grave.

He ignores that voice, he is getting good at that.

"I eat. I eat- alright- I eat!"

Minerva raises one eyebrow, but it isn't the sardonic glare he is used to. Instead, carved into those usually so stoic features, is a deep sadness. And exhaustion, the little tainted voice tells him with a wince; you are hurting people, it continues.

"Mr Potter, this had gone too far. I let you try and fix this issue before, I really did want you to take a shot at getting this under control, however emancipation is extremely dangerous. I think the time has come to address the headmaster with this-"

"Oh like that benevolent fuck gives a flying shit-" He is spitting before he can consciously work over his words. The chair shatters down onto the floor, echoing through the almost empty office and somehow he is standing.

"Look! Look, I'm eating!" He clumsily grasps that biscuit, sitting so innocently on the saucer and stuffs it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing once. Then twice. Then, as it crumbles into sandpaper on his tongue- sticking in his throat in a gooey mass of sugar and butter and eggs and fluffy white flour- he is forced to snatch up that vile concoction she pretends is tea to wash it down.

But it doesn't help because now there is sugar lingering at the back of his tongue and he wants to retch.

He wants to retch.

He wants to scream.

He wants to crawl somewhere dark and small and closed and curl up inside him and cease to exist.

"LOOK! I'm fucking eating, aren't I? Isn't that what you wanted?! Do you believe me now?!"

But she doesn't, he can see it in the quivering, humourless smile.

So, he takes another biscuit from her tin without asking.

"Look. I'm eating. I'm eating. Just like you wanted."

And he is. He is finishing that second sugared cookie like it's nothing, taking another.

The anger is faltering.

"I'm eating- I'm eating, miss- Why won't anyone fucking beleive me?"

But he knows why.

It was because he is stumbling back from the biscuit tin, the treat falling from thin fingers like a gun, staring at it like a rabid animal as he finally realised just what he had done. It's because he was crying hot, fast tears and he had no idea when he had started. It's because he didn't make to move from the wall, hand flexing involuntarily as if grasping for hold if he were to fall.

And he is, so he slides down it instead.

Not eating, Harry thinks, is the easy part.

The difficult part is how Minerva watches him from her desk as he sobs into his drawn up knees with that pitying look in her eye and twitching legs as if she longs to cross over to him.

The difficult part is the way Dumbledore still won't meet his desperate gaze as he tells tales of the dangers of St. Mungo's in the current political environment and the way he smiles with a twinkle in his eye as he hands Harry a nutrition potion and suddenly Harry wanders if someone would catch him before he punches the crippled man's smile right off his face because Harry doesn't eat and Harry isn't fine and he's LYING. And everyone knows. And everyone cares but nobody cares.

The difficult part is that soiled, muddy little voice- that hungry, starving, ravenous, hollow little voice- that he misses so piteously.

Because, as it turns out, after a while it stops screaming and life is so very blank without it.

**Author's Note:**

> I am in no way saying this is what an eating disorder is. This was my interpretation of my own issues, I don't speak for anyone else. I just publish my own self therapy writing with the hope that it makes just one person feel less alone.


End file.
